30 March 2017

Loyal, compassionate and feminist
would have to be the last three adjectives I would use to singly characterize
AmTaham True.The man had three
daughters.At no time in my recent nor
remote memory of him, not even one time,
do I know him to have made a vulgar, let alone, sexist comment, done an
objectifying deed or initiated or participated in any blatant or subtle acts of female suppression including humor or
the many, many forms of pornography.How
dare he – and call himself … father?Morally,how dare he?

AmTaham wouldn’t’ve anyhow –
buttressing an ancient and well – known, but conveniently and so, so
purposefully ignored, point:men do not
innately have to.They do not get to.Because they’re men and because for 12,000
years or so they have brutalized and suppressed the majority of human beings
that there are on Earth because they’ve simply been able to, they do not have to.All of their lives men can live and never, not ever, think up and then
actually go ahead and say or do something that somehow, in their sphere,
projects them to be dominant over or better than or able to put down girls and
women.

Sand upon rather literal bedrock
it is that AmTaham True, among what appears, however, to comparatively be only
a very, very few other men, documented that what was so, that which was in
existence 10,000 BCEto at least 70,000
BCE, that is, for at least 60,000 years, is still true after the last 12,000 years,
or a periodof only one – fifth as
long as that entire previous time span, have elapsed:that the female and things feminine are as
worthy of everything as is the male
and things masculine.Things such as
will, reverence, honor, recognition, voice, freedom, peace, independence, power
– and humanization – throughout
…our entire
lives.

And trust.Along with all of the other examples of how
AmTaham True never, not one time, did
or said or even thought up something wrong against females and, specifically
against his daughters, he never ever, not
one time, betrayed me.Most of all,
AmTaham True never sold me out to Herry.

As did Mehitable.As did Mehitable time and time and time
again.As also did Dr. Herod Edinsmaier
know – always know – that she would.

AmTaham True knew, instead, what
Herod Edinsmaier has never acknowledged.AmTaham alwaysknew just exactly what he had in us three
girls.As a man of the soil, he knew
what gift he’d been givenin siring … daughters:the Earth’s Future.Righteous Ancestor that he would too, too
soon become, not only did AmTaham True not “despair” over ¾ths of
his immediate progeny walking around the World asus Not Males, AmTaham True actively and
outwardly and often acknowledged his
massive good fortunein fathering so
many daughters as his children.We girls
held his Future.We women are
his Future.

AmTaham was nothing at all if he
wasn’t loyal – including to his own kids, probably from the time they were
first conceived.Certainly up to the
very moment he drew his last breath.AmTaham already had two middle names, hence one of the two reasons that
Mirzah did, too; and while neither of them was ‘Loyal’, at least one of them should’ve
been.To friends he had had since his
childhood, particularly to his little brother Wilbert, and some since the war
years.But, especially to those from his
college days when he’d begun again undergraduate work at the age of 40 years –
alongside Rufus Adegboi, a colleague of his and probable Ancestor now also,
who’d walked nearly 900 miles from his tribe and lands of the back – country to
the west coast of Africa to sail to America to study agricultural economics, I
guess a walking effort on behalf and in the interests of educating one’s self
that AmTaham could really relate to, his having also walked all of his youth
into a parochial school in town from the outlying lands that were his mother’s
and father’s fields.

AmTaham never, as regards the
three children of his that were female, sold them out to the holocaustic
domination of the male – supremacist society that he so very, very easily could
have.And, specifically, he did not, for the sake of his
own glorification in their eyes or his colossal desire to be in his Truemaier
grandsons’ lives, betray me, his own child, to the man Herry, who held the
keys, literally, to AmTaham’s access to Zane, Jesse and Mirzah.He up and fell down dead, AmTaham did, on
Monday, 30 March 1992, crossing into his so well – earned role of Righteous
Ancestor without ever seeing or touching his Truemaier grandsons one last, promised
time mid October 1991– rather than break his stance and pledge of loyalty to
me, his own belovéd daughter.

So when Zane declared to us all
that his History Day film subject was to be his most revered and belovéd
Grandpa AmTaham, you can believe I was not at all surprised.Yet so, so pleased.And you can imagine that the Good and
Wonderful Doctor Herod Edinsmaier was nowhere to be seen on the scene helping
Zane to get any of this project’s undertaking accomplished either.

Herry, on the other hand, was up to next to nothing
honorable, “ … sand upon bedrock.”“Some
things” such as the apparently disembodied vaginas and breasts, the
procrastination during and actual absence from his doctoring job, the
procrastination during or, rather, the outright daily disappearance of his
physique altogether from any of his labors of the fathering job, the neediness
of his narcissism although of pillared prominence as a physician in the
community, the passive aggressive silences, the intransigence and contrariness,
the smutty and sluttish language alongside his voyeuristic use of pornography
not to mention the vulgar, sexual spin Herry implied or actually verbally put
onto everything including ordinary poems, perfectly correct vocabulary words on
TV and in ordinary conversation, even on the verbiage with which he chose to
address me or spitefully spewed in the spit that was his mother – fucking,
spousal pillow talk and foreplay, his incessant smirks and snide, sarcastic
retorts, his exhibitionism through the deliberate opening of the bedroom
draperies, the wearing of blue jeans on the weekends with large butt or crotch
holes in them and without any underwear on so that his hairy scrotum hung
through as he walked or sat legs apart, his answering the Othello doorbell clad
only in his equally holey skivvies and nothing else – without regard to who may
be on the other side, his loathing of anything that smacked the least way
sideways of homosexuality or lesbian and gay issues, his writings, the company
he constantly kept who were both women and men with minds in as much need of
repetitious, around – the – clock adulation and insatiable ego buildup as
Herry’s head was.Herry groped (at
least) Grace; an indecent liberty the frottage, his frotteurism is concealingly
and subtly termed in ‘therapeutic’ circles.The fondling incestuously – and probably worse – of three little
sisters, the bestiality.

I was just … some thing to be
consumed, to be “ … used and humiliated.”Then – … then there was
Herry’s crime of supplying pornography to kids, – to my Truemaier Boys!And,
finally of course, the terrorism and torture of “ … the world’s oldest bias
crime … ” –– the ultimate mother –
fucking:the Good and Wonderful
Doctor Herod Edinsmaier went after – and threatened them all with death – my Sons!

First things first here!We have to DEhumanize the ex – Cunt yet once
again.And even more so around the deal of this specific dead man … than we
already have before this, her daddy’s dying day.Had I not stopped to literally beg before daJudge
assigned to me at the courthouse first, 11:15 to 11:45 am, Monday, 30 March
1992, still the very same first morning that I was trying to
process the incredulity which was befalling upon me and mine that day, my three
Truemaier Boys would not have arrived back in the Burg for their belovéd Grandpa
AmTaham’s funeral at all.And ‘that
development’ in The Opera would have been just mighty fine with Herry –– if Zane,
Mirzah and Jesse all had missed it –– considering how Herry himself had always
felt about his ex – father – in – law.“You promise to not drive them anywhere?”“You promise to see them only at the
residence of your mother’s and at the places of the service proper and nowhere
else; that includes only to the cemetery, graveside, is that correct?”“They are not to be in your direct care, is
that understood?”Never out of this
judge, who of course was the High Aggrandizier himself, Sol Wacotler Seizor,
never, not one word of this mere man’s
lexis on this miserable matter included any sentiment sounding whatsoever at
all like, “ … Aaah, gee, Ma’am, we’re all here so sorry for the Loss of your
father today.”No.Uh – uh.O No!

And I?I did not shed one mother – fucking tear in
front of this dastardly heartless DEhuman – fucker either.Not one!I saved them all for who really mattered, walked out of that world’s
wicked aura, aimed Ol’ Black east yet one more time again, out onto the federal
Lincoln Highway … US #30 … and left behind me and suspended for the time being
Herod Edinsmaier’s holocaustic hatred of things Legion – like.Again alone.

Not until 2:30 p.m. did I arrive.On, now, the
saddest day of my whole life –– for a trek by automobile that ordinarily should
have been completed to Williamsburg by any ‘normal’ father (such as, for
example, … Mehitable’s only – born human, Sterling) by, O say from initial
packing on Havencourt in The Teacup to pulling in to the driveway there at her
and AmTaham’s house in the Burg, 10 a.m. –– Straightaway in line with controlling
androcentrism and the epitomic essence of patriarchy’s power, I owed half of my
most grief – stricken day to Herry and to his folie follies with judges and the
Next Stupid – Ass Heifer in his Stash.At this
specific day’s start, I had to suffer and to receive unto myself the
execution of Horrid King Herod’s aprovechar
practice in ‘the Court’ again of its first royally screwing me, the mother of
three of AmTaham’s most favored folks on the entire Planet.And it was Herry’s final assault on AmTaham,
too, to besmirch his memory with this exploit against another of AmTaham’s
favorites, the one with whom the, now,
Righteous Ancestor annually shared his Winter Solstice renewal and all the rest
of his Truth, wisdom and nature:me.

After this recurring
belittling courtroom beating and mother – mugging, little did I know that I
apparently owed someone else besides Herry his opportunity, too, to wreck
violence, to rain, as well as, to reign down upon me, the DEhuman, the masses’
hellfire and to mouth – whip me bloody with his verbal vengeance and terrorism.Only – Brother Sterling’s additional bombastic
tyranny is, indeed, why my ‘safety in
numbers’ deal, a protection never taught to her three daughters by Mother
Mehitable and for which Dr. Legion True always,
always, always calculates and accords my precious self before leaving my
home –– now!I parked Ol’ Black in the driveway, walked up
the outer concrete steps, about ten of them on the rocky northern edge of the bi
– level, caramel brick ranch with chocolate brown trim, to the doorway of my
parents’ home and, after repeatedly knocking without any response whatsoever,
escorted myself into its tiny foyer which nearly immediately opens off to its right
side into the very bathroom that had been AmTaham’s death chamber.As time would prove true, I accomplished this
fairly simple physical exercise into AmTaham’s and Mehitable’s west – edge home
over the course of that day and the next six –– for the very last times.

To its left or the easterly direction of this short entry
space, a visitor turned directly into the True kitchen,

a well – lit, modest one designed like a boxcar with
blackish linoleum splashed by light speckles of white and pink within it –– over
which my firstborn Truemaier, as an infant, used to crawl to a water bowl that Gran
Mehitable placed down upon it for Zane to actually lap there from it like a little
kitty cat drinks.Things on one side and
about an equal number of things on the other side, lots of cupboards both up
and down and all of them crammed chockfull of pans and pots and other stuffs
and lots and lots of countertop workspace, a kitchen with all of the necessary,
and quite a few unnecessary, appliances.Round, clothed table, very small with really only enough room at it for
two people, place settings and food items at the very far east end that,
itself, either bifurcated into AmTaham’s home realty office or, at right angles
to his office, a permanently opened archway that led into a spacious and very
comfortable living room.A kitchen and
living room, both, in which breakable bric – a – brac, all manner of
knickknacks and other cheap, cheap gimcracks spewed and splat themselves all
over in between the things, and low – down on curio corners and shelves too, crappy
ornaments which were neverremoved when my Truemaier Babies came to visit.

“He has to learn what I mean when I say ‘NO!’,” her boomed “homeland
law” spat back at me –– as Mehitable would simultaneously slap the dorsal
aspects of any of my Boys’ tiny hands since she claimed to know such ‘truths’
from ancient, (and, obviously, far less
than … righteous – ) ancestral … “parenting” … times.Verisimilar in violent style Mehitable’s was
to that of Fatlantic’s Grand Lay Priest’s, the Great Juggern Aut Misein
Edinsmaier’s, filthy, lewd and loutish baling wire – whippings about the very same
aspects of the bilateral calves of older children’s lower limbs –– those kiddos
seemingly not quickly enough coming into compliance with that specific man’s “parenting and homeland laws.”

Unwanted intruder who I always believed myself to be before
this date … when, upon my arrival, it’d been only my mother at her house there
… I swiveled around from the bathroom doorway and its early – morning figment of
my falling father imaged on my brain to join the voices I already heard coming
from deep within that kitchen.Except
that, myself entirely wordless as of yet and from the carpeted
foyer inwardly, I took only two wee steps forward on that blackish flooring
before –– as had been Legion True’s very same patriarchal dealing with
Professor and hardly quakerly or eldering
P.M. Flunk’s fist – on – the – DEhuman’s – maternal – breastbone mother – fuck,
I was summarily halted.

An instantaneous screaming at
the top of his lungs occurred not more than an inch and a half from my hearing
ear, perhaps two to three inches altogether –– but no further –– from that working right eardrum of mine.As Dear, Dear Daddy just, indeed, had done! I
myself –– truly and literally –– nearly fell down to the
floor from the force behind daMan’s hardly (as
well) brothering blast, “YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!!YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!!YOU KILLED MY FATHER!!!YOU.KILLED.MY.FATHER! ! !”

This –– from out an orifice situated on Sterling’s lower
face which was ajar a distance that I, long – time a medical worker, had never
known possible for the temporomandibular joint of a human being.A python ingesting its constricted, crushed
and asphyxiated antelope or gazelle whole, yes, but not a width which a human’s
jaws could uncover, no.

Immediately flanked in this feat
at Brother’s right shoulder and, remarkably, at the very same swiftness that it
required for Sterling to reach me splayed The Widow Mehitable in all of her cyanotic
cyclonic wrath as well.Both of these
two robots raging in symphonic – conducting stance together, he with his right
and she with her right also, took to jabbing their respective index fingers
into the air, repeatedly stabbing them downward into and mere millimeters away from
connecting with my sternum and breasts.While the spread mouth on Sterling underwent no break from its
massacring work, no sounds emitted from Mehitable’s; but the entire bulwark
that was her cranium, face, neck and chest, that is her whole head and upper
trunk, gyrated up and down like a black Angus bull’s massive front side does
inside a Spanish fighting arena and bore on its facial anterior the same
expression as one can imagine embellishes said bull’s.Her mouth was indeed silent next to Most –
Favored Son Sterling’s which was obviously moving for hers also, Mehitable’s own
lips rigid and pursed, the cartilaginous cords strained and popping out from
her neck.The only elaboration missing
were the two streams of hottest steam cartooning and jettisoning from out of
both of The Widow’s nostrils, but each naris snorted again and again in
rhythmic synchrony with the two flying right fists and index fingers, and itty
bitty flecks and strings of mucousy snot flit out onto the flesh above her
upper lip.

I saw plenty of spit and mucus
and phlegm, but the body fluid that is tears’ secretions –– that I saw none of emitting from these madness machines’ four total bulbar
cavities.I, on the other hand, was
utterly reduced to nothing but.Weeping from
out my own sockets like, like … aaaah, like … I’d just lost my dad or something.

No one else.Not one
other person was in this house yet.Just
the three of us there along around 2:45 or so –– while Sterling continued the dastardly
duet that was my brother’s and my
mother’s.Straight out –– classic
… this scenario –– of the data findings and results’ pages of Mothers
on Trial researcher and author, Dr. Phyllis Chesler, regarding noncustodial
mamas facing down –– in my case, all alone –– the violent and
violating vitriol exactingly flung at them from their very own families, “It’s
cuz of you that he’s dead!You killed
him!You and all your goddamn
problems!You killed him sure’s if you’d shot him dead yourself!It’s cuz of all the goddamn, friggin’
problems you brought to him!You did this.You killed my father.”

“He was my father,
too.”

“Yeah?Yeah?!!! Well,
fuck you!You killed
him!It’s all cuz of you.It’s
all your fault!”And Sterling
repeated for both himself and Mehitable their mantra as if I had had no daddy
ever, “You killed my father!”

It was of no wonder at all to me that with her only family friend and ally dead, Sister
Endys appeared at AmTaham’s funeral and graveside only and –– never –– over at The Widow’s house.I tore away from the blustering clutches of
these two automaton contraptions and started to wince my way with the couple of
travel bags down a carpeted hall intending to route myself into the furthest,
southwest one of the main level’s three bedrooms when Mehitable whose house
alone the entire structure now was, of course, shouted, “Where do you think you’re going?!”

“You thought what,
Young Lady?Just what did you think?”
still not crying –– no tears from this person.

And the designation with which Mehitable had referred to me
as, well, all of us “young ladies” know exactly what that means at any time someone uses it as an address, let alone, … when
one’s own mother does.“Sterling’s
right.Your brother’s absolutely right,
ya’ know!AmTaham’s dead because of you
and Endys.Because of all of the
problems you two caused all of us; that’s
what’s killed him!I don’t know how you
can live with yourself now, Young Lady!Go on!Go on!Get outta my sight!”Just shouting and screaming.And … from AmTaham’s Widow Herself … still … no tears.

With the brushing and the battering
of both of her upper extremities at the windless air in the dark hallway of her
‘home’, a building I had never known the inside of until I was 24 or 25 years
old, Herry’s Other Shrew dissed, pooh – poohed and shooed away no one other
than her second daughter – child whose first name –– Legion –– literally as in the same shaming shunning
manner of The Soooo Good and Wonderful, (albeit) Her ex
– Son – in – Law Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s, had yet to be spoken by my own mama.Escaping to that precise bedroom, I closed
the door quietly, locked it, submersed myself into the mattress on the far side
of its double bed there and faced the juncture of the west and south walls
where both walls’ windows were big slits stationed up near the ceiling, my only
view then the room’s ivory paint –– and not the Burg’s town park to the
west.The one with the little kiddos’
play equipment including a jungle gym with three, attached and graduated monkey
bars, three rocking horses, an orange – handled water hydrant next to the
bright whitely painted picnic shelter –– and The Pond barely but just large
enough for practicing canoeing skills and in which Zane Truemaier had once
plied his fishing hobby, the one on which Rosemarie’s belovéd Bill had begun
him at my firstborn’s wee and tender age of four years back at Hershey P A’s
BullFrog Valley Pond.The playthings in
threes which all of them, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had at one time or another
simultaneously occupied.To their (Now –
Newly Made) Ancestor AmTaham’s absolute delight.

After the Truemaier Boys had … each
one … learned to walk, it was that body of water … in particular … which was the
principal reason, however, behind why I never –– ever
–– allowed my three Sons to spend time at the Grandparent Trues –– without
me there as well.AmTaham
was so deaf and Mehitable quite blind and so blindly unrealistic and old, old
school in her expectations out of little
children that I never trusted her with the Boys –– and That Pond.Ever.AmTaham wasn’t home, what with his business
and all; and even if he had been, my father couldn’t have heard screams for
help, not to mention, small chatter coming from little ones who had wandered farther
away from the home – based premises than was … safe.

And Mehitable?I could just never trust that she would actually
see them, let alone, see that two – , three – and four – year – olds, that … truly … children all the way up through
12 and older require direct and
visual supervision … around water.We
had all been farmers in our younger years, the sort of lifestyle in Iowa that,
without the incredibly rare built – in swimming pool or even an above – ground
one in rural folks’ own backyards, just does not lend itself –– for those regular,
twice – weekly sessions –– to transporting the country kids 15 to 20 miles one
way into a neighboring town with the nearest public pool.With farming and all of its chores, swimming
lessons would have meant AmTaham doing all of the chauffeuring of us four Trues
or his hiring someone else to take and mind us all there … since Mehitable was
with her eyes of course, unable to drive anybody anywhere at any time!Neither AmTaham nor Mehitable swam themselves
about which I ever knew; and since my siblings and I had never been sent for lessons
either, I for one knew, having myself while recreationally swimming as a
preteen with my friends been rescued by
lifeguards out of pools three times in my former life, I knew that I could not swim to save myself! let alone, a child of mine!

And Daddee – Herry?The father who wouldn’t, upon any nightfalls,
even lock up one door anywhere, not
to mention the actual various homelands’ entrances, … to try to protect my
sleeping children?The father who cannot
even spell Zane’s name correctly one time
in his own Section D, the ‘SAFETY AND WELLBEING,’ that ‘safeguarding’ section in
Dr. Herod Edinsmaier’s very first affidavit to ‘the Court’, to daJudge (Chapter
26, Jury!) … that father?daMan who
wouldn’t even accompany me to the True residence to visit AmTaham or Mehitable
– ever?That father?Fuck, Daddee – Herry was in no way – ever – going to
beaccountable for Zane
Truemaier, Jesse Truemaier or Mirzah Truemaier … around The Pond.This little I so, too, did know!

I pulled both of the unfluffably
foam – filled bed pillows out from under whatever quilt of the (literal) scores
this woman owned and had squirreled away in this and all other of the different
bedrooms’ blonde built – in cabinets and closets and chests –– and began to cry
into them.I cried and cried and cried
and cried.

My father’s only brother, Wilbert, a couple of years younger
in age than Daddy who had himself been the eldest of six children, and
Marguerite, that man’s latest live – in since Wilbert’s divorce of long – standing
and longer marriage which had itself produced now – adult children and three of
my first cousins, arrived from Cedar Rapids, the first persons finally around
–– to be able to deflect away from me the despicably violent and violating attentions
of Mehitable and Sterling.Others of my
father’s siblings, all women, began arriving then, too, eventually all three of
the breathing ones, there having originally been four of them.All four of these DEhumans Mehitable detested
–– quite in line with my mother’s obvious jealousy of anything female within
her sphere … other than herself.Mehitable
True, it seemed to me as a wee child and now a person approaching adulthood’s middle
age, had always been adamant and right out loud in her dissing on each one of her
husband’s sisters, my paternal aunts.With only one of the three living ones, the fourth – born of Ava
Saffron’s string of a half a dozen kiddos, had Mehitable any interaction at her
True house then during Daddy’s days – o’ – death event –– or, come to think on
it … since, for that matter.That aunt
with her spouse still resided only 15 miles from Mehitable and AmTaham,
actually right on Daddy’s homestead place, the 80 acres which the Truemaier
Boys’ Great – Grandpa Zebulon and Great – Grandma Ava Saffron had farmed and
from where Ancestor Daddy had first courted Mehitable who, at the time, lived
with her corn – growing parents in another rural township approximately 10
miles to the same county’s southeast –––– all of this activity … before
AmTaham’s deployment to the Himalayas and Wilbert’s to France in the two prime killing
scenarios which were World War II’s “theaters” for brothers.

Great – Grandpa Zebulon, a pipe tobacco – smoker, a Prince
Albert – in – a – Can kind of guy after trying unsuccessfully to entirely quit
with the Lucky Strikes and the Camels and who drank only a very small amount of
medicinal whiskey and no beer although most German and never that I, someone
whom he affectionately called Li’l which sounded like Lil but is a diminutive
of Little, saw, had died there at the age of only 67.And while tiny – boned and snow – white Great
– Grandma Ava Saffron had herself lived in town for nearly a quarter century
inside first a mint green and then a freshly blue – painted wooden cottage on Williamsburg’s
south side since Zebulon’s lumberyard accident had eventually made her a very,
very comely widow under her wildly wide black brims, she was also now deceased,
too –– gone some seven years at her age then of 88 … from a fast – growing
lymphatic cancer.AmTaham’s other two
sisters lived separate lives, each singly, both in a small Cedar Rapids suburb
less than another 20 or so miles from their middle sister.One of those two was also a long – , long –
time widow and pensioner whose only child in his mid 20s had been killed one
night during an illegal drag race on a country gravel road.The youngest True sister spent her lifetime
as a secretary, quite a pianist and singer and as several elder folks’
caregiver.To these two paternal aunts I
still send birthday cards.I keep in
touch one or two other times a year as well and actually rendezvous at their haunts
over in eastern Iowa for a face – to – face chat every now and then.

When I eventually emerged from
that back refuge about an hour and a half later, quite a number of the
relatives and others were all congregating inside the gracious and spacious
living room, one both for sitting as well as for dining at a lovely blonde
ensemble located off at the far east end of it.Mehitable was at her prime … working that room.Working … working, working it.And … all of the would – be mourners now
present.This is a woman who not only
has made “Poor Me, Poor Me, O Ya’ Need to Pity Poor, Poor Me” an arts performance but also … her life’s work.And has, in addition, tried in every which
tired, old way she knows of to make it and my two sisters’ … ours, too.Hence, the ‘be soft, be servile, be deferent’
invectives to only us females and her “You lost a marriage to a doctor?A doctor?!Why, you stupid idiot!” sorts of taunting teachings and scorning –
screed censures.It was, now, around 4
in the p.m. when I was first witnessing the tears flowing from her lacrimal
canals and were they ever.Boxes containing
Kleenex two of the women kept shoving into Mehitable’s reach and all DEhumans present
could be collectively heard from time to time with their ubiquitous, “There,
there.There, there now” or the ever
popular and truly selfish question too, too many females implore from each
other that is actually a strategized, maneuvered and the desired response to
Mehitable’s poor, poor me – posturing … “O Mehitable, whatever will you do
now?”

Selfish?Yes, selfish, in that … what about AmTaham and what about those of us others who truly had relied
and depended upon him, his wisdom and his Truths daily.‘Cause, hell, Mehitable’d be just fine.Mighty fine, in fact.She would just keep on doing nowexactly what she’d always been doing, AmTaham alive or dead!Nothing about this day would
introduce change into Mehitable’s functioning in the least.Only mine would AmTaham now LOST
to me … change.This person Mehitable
would continue to control everything –– either out in front with AmTaham’s
physical form gone missing now or still hooded and concealed just as she had always
done or tried to get done before.From
out behind the dashboard lights!

The driving engine that was Mehitable’s force was to be
envied by the staunchest of radical feminists –– except for one thing:Mehitable was precisely and of relentless,
purposeful deliberation … noooo feminist, of course.Hers was a dark force, one of the genre of Mother Theresa and her ilk and
never at all one of, “Fuck, you can go this alone.You don’t need
a man.And, what’s more, you never did.”

AmTaham’s wisdom and his Truths, the stuff of which was now
most literally Ancestral … instead, still, of the natures existing “… – in – Training,” were hair – trigger,
that is instantaneously available and at all times now … accessible to me.I mean I didn’t have to wait any longer, wait
to find AmTaham at home or for him to arrive at my house or to come to the
telephone or to the end of some other lifeline.I could just call upon him, rely upon him, depend upon his Truths and
his wisdom just any ol’ time I bloody well needed him and them.That is, this –– His Dying, was the
very essence of His Things Ancestral.For me.Of this amazement, of course, I did not yet
fully comprehend on that Monday of 30 March 1992; but even now and even so, I
would soooo give up in the blink of the span of time that was that last
heartbeat of his … I would give up anything over which I have control just to
have him back breathing again.Instead
of, now, “ … always, always accessible” to me and to the Boys.

On my person I possessed a piece of pocketed paper signed by
Storm County’s High Aggrandizier himself allowing that the three Truemaiers, if
the Boys themselves wanted to, could attend their
grandfather’s funeral and, likewise, attend to the duties of it assigned therein
to any one of them.Or, some such
wording.

Me, the 44 – year – old, now – suddenly
– and – finally – all – grown – up – daughter … of a man just dead.

And,in the United States of America
in the year of 1992, the biological –– and loving –– mother of three, minor
children.

A note that “excused” me!

And, a few hours earlier, stated
that Mirzah, Jesse and Zane could become three of
AmTaham’s pallbearers if Mehitable or Sterling or
whoever, certainly not moi, had wanted this to be the case in
their, and just as certainly not my, planning of the memorializing ceremonies.I am thinking on Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s Our
Androcentric Culture published in 1911, almost a decade before the birth even
of Mehitable Natures, and transposing to the legal system and the American way
of supposed “freedoms” and “justice,” Authoress Gilman’s quotation there on … religions.“All the religions are made by men and forced
on women whether they like it or not, women –– denied souls –– given a much
lower place in religion going from the service of their fathers’ gods to the
service of their husbands’, having none of their own.We see religions make no place for women,
rigidly bigoted, unchanging as any other.That women are the bulwark of our religions is due to the acts of two
classes of men: the men of the world who keep women in their restricted
position and the men of the church who take every advantage of the limits of
women.”

Gone from the dead man’s over to
the service of her husband’s Legion True is … even though … technically ... he
be the ex – husband.And gone there onlyby way of daJudges, also almost all
exclusively the humans … first.She, of course the DEhuman, requires, has
need of and should desire for herself no justice and no freedoms of her
own.

She does need to take a note of
excusal with her, however.

When she goes over to do the
legal servicing and the bidding of him who can have her, her services and her
labors –– as well as, of course, have utterly away from her ––
because of sperm exaltation –– her very own babies which mission she
alone chose for herself the deadly risk (that pregnancy and birthing is) to grow into the human beings who they
themselves actually have become … she needs to take a note.Sordid.Macabre.

FLIP / REVERSE:A
permitting piece of judicial fuck the likes of which paper I know of no adult man
willing … to first procure and then
to carry upon his person.And, finally,
to produce to his approving and consenting mama or, say, … show his sanctioning
sister!Not to mention via a third party,
for example, to demonstrate as documentation to the ex – wife! when she, from a
long and far distance, demands to verifiably know of the daddee’s ‘legal’ proof
of his ‘temporary’ authorization?!You,
Jury?!You know of such a human, do any
of You?!

I had to ask all of
my Sons, long into their adulthoods, just how it was that they’d initially received
the clobbering finality of AmTaham’s dying because Herry and Ms. Fannie
Issicran McLive, of course, never told me.And Sterling and Mehitable haven’t –– if they ever did know.

It’s a given that I was so not allowed to
speak to Zane, Mirzah or Jesse if I had called out to Grubtrop; and although I
do not remember if I did or if I did not, I can only imagine that I no doubt
tried to do this telephoning.Any mother
would have is what I am thinking.Any of
us Mothers on Trial would have attempted to get this saddest of news to her
children so I am fairly sure that I, too, … tried to tell them.

Only from Zane do I know about the immediacy of the Boys’
receipt of the sobering knowledge that their Grandpa AmTaham had in the pentametre
of the man’s Favorite Poet Tennyson “crossed the bar” over into Ancestor
status.And Zane only knew about his own
case alone and nothing regarding what had transpired as far as his brothers’ first
acquisition of the sorrowful information.Same Edinsmaier – shunning deal as when Zane had, in Kate Mitchell Elementary’s
fifth grade of Mr. Green’s, filmed his Grandpa AmTaham True for that specific History
Day project four years earlier:Protecting and Guarding and Mentoring and Role – Modeling Herry – Daddee
was nowhere around on the scene when Zane stepped off the Grubtrop, West
Virginia community’s schoolbus that Monday afternoon, 30 March 1992, in front
of Herry’s two – story, white wood – frame rental.The Good and Wonderful Doctor was probably at
work … doctoring … ya’ know, Jury, … aaah, “healing.”If so and nevertheless … Dr.
Herod Edinsmaier was physically at a place, was at a workplace, from where he
could have quite easily then left!Literally!Child – protecting and
– guarding and – “loving” Daddee – Herry could have … should have … … if
loving ... gotten himself immediately, right there at the laboratory’s lot, into
any one of the great number of his gazillion vehicles and purposefully driven
off bound for the Truemaier Boys’ vicinity –– just in order to come to the sides
of all of these children at the very moments they each were to receive into
their brains this devastating news.

Which Healer Edinsmaier did not do for Zane.And likely not as well for Jesse and Mirzah.Fuck, not only that … Dr. Herod Edinsmaier
didn’t even (care to) know –– in the
vernacular of his Next Cuntly Spouse, in the blistering argot of blithering Ms.
Fannie Issicran McLive, Dr. Edinsmaier “had no idea” … then or, likely … ever
on any given day and time! … the virtual, the possible, let alone, the actual! vicinities
of
any of my Truemaier Boys!

Ms. Fannie McLive told Zane right there on the front
yard.

Zane, alone, without even one of his two brothers present, a
freshman in high school, just 15 years old and a boy who had just lost one of
the closest and truest friends he would ever know and have as devoted and loyal
ally throughout his entire lifetime.

The incomprehensibility of some
people’s actions does not boggle me anymore.It used to.It doesn’t do that
anymore.At all.I can see Soooo Not – Gonna! – Step
– Back – “Step”“Mother” McLive’s doing this deathly deed all by herself.Right there on the grass and sidewalk.Without any True on the telephone wire, at the
least.Or one Truemaier brother present for
each other’s steadying and silencing calm … as well.Or even just “First – Father” Edinsmaier at
all ‘around’ for (possibly!) earliest
comforting.I can visualize this actual scenario occurring.It –– as it was, of course, so determinedly and
utterly meant to –– disgusts.Still.

Same shaming shun, as well, as
to how the three Truemaier Boys, Mirzah, Jesse and Zane, had each
one received the cheerless and injurious news of their parents’
pending divorce:captured, confined and
shut up as prisoners inside their seatbelts at interstate speeds and without
benefit of the presence of their mother or any grandparent.Just detained hostages of Herry’s –– alone.Very, very alone.A life lesson Herry – The – Walt Disney
continued to teach, teach, all the time teach to each of my Boys on the day of
the death of his ex – father – in – law, AmTaham True, “Receive and take all of
this on and inside yourselves,–– alone.Certainly don’t let a woman who might’ve been important to you at one
time know or see you cry.She’s only a
female; and, if you grieve, you’re nothin’ but a weakling!After all, she’s invisible to you kids
anyhow.”Yes, by both the Good and
Wonderful Healer Herry and his Next Cunt my Boys’ mother, too, was resolutely …
was vengefully
… made to be nowhere around when any one of the three Truemaier Children first heard of their Grandpa AmTaham’s
dying that day!My Sons that day –– as
on all others –– had no mother.And I, suddenly made fatherless, too had no Sons … to give mecomfort … either!The very same shaming Edinsmaier – shun.“Years ago, still small, I lost my mother.” “
… a flood of tears must fall.”

Tuesday three – fourths of the
immediate siblings which, by then, included Ardys with her spouse from Bay
City, Michigan, Sterling with his who’d joined The Only and Most Excellent Son
– Brother from their Omaha – area home, and Dr. Legion True, alone and with No Other to comfort her, all
motored, some of us inside AmTaham’s brand – newest, two – day – old, promised
– to – be – gifted – to – Legion – when – Grandpa – was – “done with it” – Caddy
Blue The Widow Mehitable over to a town just a bit more than an hour away from
the Burg.A nice little village by
where, I’d long ago been told in my youth, farmed “a lot of Amish” although, I
wondered now, what is a lot of them?Does any one, two, three or so of humans and “their” DEhumans,
particularly those quirkily different from ourselves, constitute “a lot of
Amish” then?The “them – and – not – us”
mentality outright, and out straight as well from Mehitable, from her thinkings
and sayings.As I knew she would most
certainly do, Endys for whom Cousin Wyman had found contacts chose to forego all encounters with those of us others
in The Family prior to the very
ritual in AmTaham’s church of his childhood –– the building that at one time
had housed within its interior AmTaham True’s one – room school.That elementary institution wherein which one
specific herr reverend – schoolmaster of the early 1930s had not been so
reverent at all to, in particular, a learning, learning, always – loved – to –
learn – more – than – he – already – knew, 12 – year – old AmTaham True – kiddo
nor to that adolescent’s true and correct knowledge of The Dead’s Bones in
Africa.No actual ancestoring knowledge himself
had that herr – teaching genre of ancestor – in – training!Obviously, this unholy, tutoring dude possessed,
as well, Herry Edinsmaier’s magical mantra of “Deny, Deny, Deny!”Just deny The Truth. That of The Dead’s Bones!

The event that was unfolding as The
Funeral of My Father began taking, at
this other town, a decidedly Mehitable – turn which, in some way, was to have
been expected.And in other, crucial and
honoring, ways … not!One of the many nieces
of Mehitable Natures True on her blood side of the Natures family, actually the
eldest of all of her nieces and
nephews from both ancestries, a person then also first cousin to me and to my
sibs, owns and operates by now for a very long, long time along with her spouse
a mortuary in this locality.All-we-all
had traveled there, of course, to select the accoutrements which these two
people would then manage in the next four to five upcoming days through the
physicality that was another funeral home building, and because of its distance,
… not theirs. Another one back in Williamsburg –– made by way of a business arrangement
apparently often done between two such establishments, especially when the
specific dead’s bones involved is –– or
was –– a relative of some or one of the funeral parlors’ proprietors.

However, nearly everything else about the ceremony from this visit on out
took on the characteristics of an affair which I did not recognize at all as a
True one.Only a year and a half earlier
this man, AmTaham True, had called a family meeting comprised of only us four
adult children of his –– and of no one else –– to exactly explain things inside The Willof the True Estate and to elaborate clearly to us direct
descendents of his about the terms AmTaham True had specifically set forth –– in
witnessed writing –– regarding his dying and death –––– one biiiig, big one
of which understood terms was to be … cremation!All four of us were present at Said
Meeting!Well, any of that family
meeting’s directives?I mean any
of AmTaham’s particularly detailed wants?So certainly were not now happening!And did not.No,
Mehitable turned the entire deal all upside down and around Her Way –– that is,
“in The Right Way” … as I, when a little kiddo, used to continuously hear pitched
at me if I fucked up stuff, according to her, which I’d been assigned to do.

The first of a couple of horrid liturgically dirge – worthy details
which Mehitable orchestrated was the casket selection.This lamentation deal commenced with an
actual parade led by the Natures niece as majorette – mortician, sans her
metallic baton of course but poised pen in hand instead, out of her parlor’s
backdoor to an outbuilding wherein were contained temperature and moisture
controls and about a dozen different full – sized and wee kiddo – measured models
in which one, now dead, could sail away off to Never – Never – Evermore land.I saw in this structure not one urn nor jar
appropriate to the holding of the ashes of anything carbonaceous after its
first being burnt beyond crisped or crypt or cryptic belief.Not even a box which was a construct slapped
together out of cheap pine board slabs such as had been the environs of my dear
friend Frieda Chicken Guthrie’s catacomb.Silver or pewter – like, several different brown ones, black but gilded
with that tacky gold paint trim, white and child – sized.Mehitable’s, er, ah, um, rather AmTaham’s, choice
came in brown and ‘naturally’ was quite
appropriately padded with that pillowy, velvety smocked stuffing of satin or
some such other fabric.In off –
white.Oyster shell, likely.

Once in it, Daddy did look lovely, of course –– but for the
expression on his lips and in those “peaceful” eyelids of his that otherwise
pronounced in solitude to no one there willing
to or capable of Truely hearing him –– except me! “This is so not what I’d wanted nor stated.But, fudge, what do I bloody care now?I’m free –– free at last!She’s always had Her Way about anything and everything
anyhow!”Shit, the casket wasn’t even
pine, at the least, and was entirely of a metal composition including
appropriate railing handles for gripping use by pallbearers –– about whom … “I
have no idea.”Dark, dark blue – black
suit coat, pure white shirt, and some necktie about which I –– still –– also remember nothing –– except
that he had been the man to teach me how
to tie and to knot one once, my standing behind him and reaching around
from the rear his shoulders still massive although weakened by that polio
thingy … to secure it.“Because you have
sons now, Kitty, and will need sometime to know how to teach them to do this,” Daddy’d
coached me, the Truemaier Boys’ ma, on the Four – in – Hand first, then the
Half Windsor; and finally I graduated with the Double.This little life lesson, too, for a mother of
sons AmTaham had guided me in learning –– and I was long then into my 30s, his obviously full – well knowing even at
that point about Herry – Daddee’s type of role – modeling … teachings.

O and the second detail, the actual structuring of Daddy’s
memorial service itself:from the music
pieces right on down to which program cover to choose!Ardys the Eldest, probably the most male –
identified female adult I have ever met and fully proud of it, a woman who took
straight to heart and learned very, very well Mehitable’s lessons on servility
and deference to all men and so self
– defined even more than Herry’s Next
– Cunt McLive or Childless – ‘Evaluator’ Canard or indeed Mehitable herself,
settled on one along with our mother too, I am guessing, that outdid even their
own usual dependencies.Plain white, the
front cover had on it a wooden cross with its bottom pole’s post piercing
through a king’s three – pronged crown in black ink, the holy trinity symbol I
am supposing, through which also lay on top of the cross a palm branch also in
black.Not so appropriate for moral
atheist AmTaham True my thought was; but, hey, ‘twas only my thought and I now bothered not at all to verbalize it, the cover
itself being one – fourth of the entire, 8½” x 11”, folded deal to begin with
and printed on mighty thin paper!About
that part AmTaham would’ve been pleased –– that is, about his kiddos’ not
having spent for expensive cardstock or something fancier.Everything about this man his entire lifetime like so many, many of
the Midwest’s farmers before him oozed frugality, minimalism, simplicity –––– and that had been the utter substance of AmTaham
True’s continuing message for us four at that family meeting, the distinct
elements of said meeting Ardys, Sterling and The Widow Mehitable were almost as
utterly ignoring –––– full – tilt funeral
boogie –––– right now!

It got worse … way
worse in point of fact.

In the lower right of this program
cover were the following words ––still from these three’s most magically made
and such ‘godly’ writings, most certainly not of AmTaham’s!“Be faithful unto death, and I will give you
a crown of life” had been lifted out of a place called revelations in some male
– construct’s worth of papers which martin luther alongside centuries of other only
– authoring men dominatingly termed ‘holy’ and which words, therefore because these several dudes “had said so,”
are to be believed and heeded!Opening
the program to page four and past a stinging passage on its page two about “Who
knows the power of your anger?For your
wrath is as great as the fear that is due you” said to have been taken from an
entity entitled psalms 90, to a back – and – forth group – recitation between
the preacherman and us, the mourning masses and the allegedly ‘AmTaham True – honoring’
assembled, there appeared this untruth,
a wholly hypocritical and speciously incorrect falsity that started off this “responsive
reading” … beginning, of course, with the ministerman’s first getting to speak,
“As it was confessed by AmTaham at his confirmation and at other times
throughout his christian life as a public testimony of his christian faith, we
join in making our faith known …” … and then the rest of us, along with this
cleric in his costly long white dress, were to launch into babbling away at
another deal full – up of more only – men’s words called the apostles’ credo … or
some such thingy.

“Confessed?Public?Throughout?Faith?christian faith?”

I should have … looooong and loudly … screamed back as myentitled!
“responsive reading,” “We all here so assembled today … know … that AmTaham True had been forcibly coerced as a 12 – year –
old, very publicly bludgeoned even!And
that this man, when he lived and breathed and upon this World walked, entirely loathed
any semblance of this whole, particularly mother
– fucking, public confessional – type shit that, since the time from when he
was just a budding teenager, he bloody well bloomin’ didn’t at all believe in!Religious education is child abuse, is child
abuse, is child abuse.Child abuse is
religious education.Very!”

As if this gobbledygook and the
claptrap that was the exhibit of AmTaham True inside his corpse and still not put to us per his wishes as
the heap of carbonaceous ashes which Daddy had really wanted to become weren’t
enough, Ardys, Mehitable and Sterling then topped the whole of it all off with
a couple of tunes which they called hymns:“rock of ages” and “jesus, savior, pilot me.” These two, androcentric ditties were to be
sung by all of us before and after this guy in his floor – length, cloud – robe
throttled by such the fancy, multi – colored and likewise – expensive chokehold
of a braided stole allowed ( … of course!)
himself to sermonize on and on using some stock – and – canned, surreally metaphoric
funereal message said ministerman
termed, “following the shepherd’s voice” taken from yet another man’s myths,
one by the ubiquitous name of john written within yet another male – identified
construct claiming itself to be the be – all, end – all, tallest tale of all traditions:the christian gospel.

The whole deal of this funeral
deed then was to be done with by a concluding number … just before the
recessional … rather levelly headed up as “abide with me, fast falls the eventide.”Then all of us assembled crawled off in
carbon – spewing cavalcade (… instead of with carbonaceous Mr. True) to the
side of his gravesite, the lone bugler’s Taps,
more words of such untruths about
Daddy blathered all around out there, then my father’s actual lowering –– and
my actual being brought down soooo, so low too I thought –– then, as well, the
dirt of course symbolizing Daddy’s ‘true’ True ashes, the cut, quite carbonaceous
flowers, more symbolism strewn down on top of that soil’s first, the church –
ladies’ swell – tasting food and, well, … back to all the rest of us then
living all of our separate lives … lovingly, … I guessed!NOT!

Wednesday the Truemaier Boys, just the three of them
unaccompanied by anybody else whom they knew and about which I was so glad,
flew themselves in to the Eastern Iowa Airport outside of Cedar Rapids to its
south, and that for us four was no
April Fool’s joke!I had not seen two of
my sons, Mirzah and Zane, since Monday night, 28 October 1991 … of the Elitist and
Erudite Edinsmaier’s and Flunks’ mother
– and kiddos’ – fucking fiasco!And, of
course, Jesse and I had not seen each other since the Friday night before that one,
the threateningly portentous blackness within our Ol’ Black of “If I’m taken
away to live in another state,

I know I won’t ever be a kid again in Iowa, Mom.I won’t ever again come back to Iowa as a
child; I just know it” sorrow!Subsequently, I, Invisible Ma, “had not been allowed” to even talk to
any one of my three Boys since then …
either.“MOTHER, YOU HAVE NO SONS!SONS, YOU HAVE NO MOTHER!”

Shit, we had a helluva lot of
catching up to do –– and with such the gargantuan Grandpa AmTaham loss and no
privacy at all, it was, well, … not to be, of course!What did I and our needs matter after all?

This funeral ‘fun’?This was entirely The Widow Mehitable’s
ShowTime and not for us to desire anything whatsoever to suit ourselves:I couldn’t even go along to the airport
to pick them up!That task was relegated and delegated
not to the Truemaier Boys’ own mother at all but to their Uncle Sterling, a
patriarchal duty from which the brother absolutely delighted in deposing me ––
wearing with its directive … such the
very same snide – like sneer as Herry’s!And aaaall about which Charlotte Perkins Gilman would have so, so easily
recognized, too:The mother’s chattel –
children, as of course is her own person, her actual self, are only to be …manhandled!Thusly, so ‘handled’ then from
one man only … over to becoming the property, voila! of only another man’s
–– and most assuredly for certain! never, never are the kiddos
to be delivered into the overall care of … only their very own mama!“How androcentrically managed and ‘balanced’, Ms. Gilman, not?” I was left thinking.She can do the chores of and for the children
as well as for him –– whoever the him is
at the time who happens to have the exalted spermatozoal DNA – possession
rights to her children,
that is, she can do the cooking, the serving, the cleaning up after, the
worrying about.She, the slave however,
just cannot have any rights at all to her own children.All of the perfectly papal personae and that
renegade one, marty luther?Why, any of these so godly men’d have been so
through – and – through … so thoroughly … pleased with their two descendent
pupils, the quite Male – Identified Mehitable and Her Most Excellent Only Male – Offspring Sterling!

It was spectacular, of course, just to see them all –– even if for such the so awfully
sorrowful deal as was this specific week’s.Yes, they appeared to me so much taller and older!Hell, it’d been over five months’ time!Girls and boys their ages have spurts!Zane was particularly quiet and subdued, not
at all his usually exuberant self.I
mean, sure, one of his, and mine, too, most favored people in the whole world
died; but Zane had always … before … possessed
a special resiliency about bad stuff in life not witnessed in most folks of all
ages –– as had been the case with so many rescued animals particularly … including
his Sylvan laprine inside the Brookside Forest, a blesséd buoyancy after being
booted life’s hardballs –– of which Zane did not display any during this entire visit.Things surrounding either AmTaham’s dying or everything back in West
Virginia or generally overall were entirely far, far too weighty –– even for Zane, still only 15 years old and in the
very midst of his teenage years.Earlier,
there had been talk of Zane’s tooting for AmTaham the Taps on his trumpet which I had brought with me from Ames
exactly because of that possible plan.One
lovely lone oak tree, already with this year’s Vernal Equinox and late, late
March nearly leafed out and so tall, had been singled out down a hillock a
short piece from Daddy’s soon – to – be grave where out from under it the solo
bugler was to sound that final farewell.That tooter did not turn out to be Zane … after all.

For me the next three days passed by as pleasantly and as
warmly as the sudden, wholly unexpected death of one’s belovéd father possibly
could.From the comforting of the
presence and embracing arms of my equally belovéd Boys to the words and gazes
from my own four nephews and extraordinary first cousins of whom I am so
luckily blessed with several superb and stupendous individuals on both the
Natures and True sides of the family to the amazing miracles whom I have for
friends.

This man had a host of admirers and inspired friends
himself.The viewing and reception at
the Burg funeral home I found to be the
hardest for me coming as it did on the very evening of the afternoon when the
Boys had flown in … Wednesday.After the
first day, the hardhearted and meanspirited death – filled day of Monday not
only of AmTaham’s attack and dying but also their day of making Legion True out
to be “the evil, murdering monster that we, Sterling and Mehitable, know her so
to be –– just like Herry also says she
is!” and the next day of preparations and planning were over, I exhaled and let
my hair hang down and then, because of it, felt as did the Boys as well, fairly
shocky –– something a normal DEhuman
should expect to.

The humble church of AmTaham’s youth was packed, the women
of the kitchen, and the folks in there were
only females of course, the food and their serving of it up all proved delicious
and sensational and the graveside ceremonies … so sadlybreathtaking.Returning to Mehitable’s house, the Boys and
I determined to stay in its far recesses –– as the same deal as when The Widow
had bluntly ordered me to its very remote bedrooms as a 23 – year – old
divorcée back from New York City to hide out isolated there and to mask my
adult self away from local visitors and guests at her and AmTaham’s front
door.Mehitable True had done this very same
concealing of an entirely adult but psychotropic drug – taking Endys, too,
always couching her all – consuming embarrassment of my bipolar – labeled
sister and me and our apparent humiliation of her in her hometown community as …
“for our protection.”With a full
bathroom in the back as well, we four talked, we read, we talked some more
coming out from our retreat to the well – lit living room with its picture
window spance to the south only once in awhile … to specifically visit there
with relatives and friends.The Boys
enjoyed especially the company of their True cousins, my four nephews, these
seven male humans total then who equaled the entire extent of all of AmTaham’s
and Mehitable’s grandchildren.About the fact of their only – maleness,
Mehitable, herself merely birthing but a lone one male out of four total kiddos
altogether, continues to this day to repeat her colossal pride.

Time, as it does not always do for me at all, passed by us
four … entirely too swiftly:it was
Sunday morning of the 05th day of April, and my daddy AmTaham had
been in the ground and cold now … since Thursday afternoon.Mirzah’s, Zane’s and Jesse’s flight was set
to leave at approximately 1:30 p.m. that afternoon –– first for Kansas City, transferring them there
then to Pittsburgh and at last by way of yet another transfer on through to the
small, regional Montclank – Grubtrop airport inside central West Virginia … and
once there, thus, back into Herry – Daddee’s (alleged) handling before it grew
too, too dark … I was thinking.The Natures’
70 – something stunning and marvelous matriarch, Pearl, of my First Cousins Amanda,
Carolina and Wyman and for all of her time an aunt to awe any niece, asked to
drive the Truemaier Boys … with me finally included … and, of course, along
with The Widow Mehitable herself to their plane’s departure.She would, she said if Mehitable wanted it
that way, chauffeur us all there in AmTaham’s newest and wowing Caddy Blue, now
only about nine total days out from its purchase and into the Trues’ actual
ownership and unmistakably only (legally
blind) Mehitable’s … henceforth.This
offer of my Aunt Pearl’s Mehitable speedily agreed to.And since according to family law judges and to
the Truemaier Boys’ other owning – men like Herry and Sterling, it simply had
to be, then so gladly did … I too agree.

What it soooo did not
simply have to be, however –– was that
exact day!

Around about 10:30 in that a.m., Zane, never really this
entire time so far the effervescent and ebullient Zane whom I could recognize,
fell very nauseous and dizzy, diaphoretic, vertiginously woozy and took to
becoming nearly immediately prostrate on his belly in the bedroom closest to
the living room and kitchen.

I summoned pots to puke forth in, cooled water in which to
wet washcloths for forehead mopping and daubing –– and his Grandmother Mehitable,
“Call Herry, either you or Sterling.Get
him on the phone and tell him to reschedule the flight.Zane cannot go anywhere today.Here’re the telephone numbers, both for the
residence and for Herry’s lab at the med center.Go!Call him, please!Now!”

“I’ll do no such thing!!!” was my immediately screamed, I mean stat! answer back.Now that,
indeed! was something I did recognize!Right up there alongside her “in The Right
Way!,” “I shall do no such thing!” is Mehitable’s standard response directly to me to just about anything and
everything I have ever asked of her … throughout my entire lifetime and so it
was certainly seeming to continue to be that
right about then, too!

The Widow’s manner was dictatorial and tyrannical as if she,
her very self, had been the parental rights’ – terminating praetor on that earlier
Storm County judicial bench.As a matter
of fact, it was pretty obvious that she was very well calculating right on that
spot there of Zane’s sickbed, at his and his brothers’ expense
of their physical health, psyches and well – being, the possible weight and
cost specifically to her … of my
venture at flights’ rescheduling.What
would be Herry’s take on her, Mehitable, the maternal grandmother’s siding back
here in Iowa with the Truemaier Boys’ mama (who also just happened to be her
very own child) … versus … placing
them all on the previously arranged airplane right then and there ––with a traveling Truemaier child so ill! and
all –– back to their daddee’s?So very,
very soon into the Loss of their Grandpa AmTaham not only from her but from the
rest of us as well, she was, in mighty fine – tuned and operating aprovechar style, already in to figuring
out what the likelihood would be of The (Ex – ) Son – in – Law Herry Edinsmaier’s
interpreting her actions at attending to the true “best interests of the Truemaier Boys” if she gave up, for even just this one day, her intentions and efforts at remaining Herry
– Daddee’s most staunchest of allying, male – identified henchwomen.If in her immediate future alongside, of
course, STEP – Right – In – “Mom” – McLive, ... if Mehitable did not
abrogate the wishes of the Boys’ actual mother and, now, diagnostician, nurse, doctor and healer as well, and if she
did not collude –– and right now! –– with
The Good and Wonderful Doctor – Daddee Herry and go up against the involvement
in their futures by the Truemaier Boys’ actual mama and instantly and directly
work to make her as invisible to Mirzah, Jesse and Zane … as Daddee and stepMommy do, why then what ‘privileges’ as The
Takeover Mother – Surrogate inside these brothers’ lives would Dr. Herod
Edinsmaier rescind from her, Mehitable?!“I. Will. Do. No. Such. Thing!”

“Please, Mom.Look at
him.He can’t go anywhere today.Not like this. Please, please call Herry.Even Herry won’t want him to come back in
this condition, I’m sure of it,” although I was nowhere at all sure of my
statement.In fact, I felt it a lie ––––
but I had to try.Zane was sooo, so sick.

“Yes, he can.And he
will.For all you know, he’s faking it!”
she honestly said that.Mehitable,
Zane’s grandma … allegedly in the agony and throes of gravest grief over the dying
of her own great husband … she actually said that.She did.

And he did.Zane did
fly, too.That very day.

No schedule of Herry – Daddee’s or Mehitable’s making was
about to be by me upset or
disrupted.Uh – uh.

Up Mehitable got him; and since Zane really hadn’t thrown up
yet but could barely navigate against the spinning sensation, it mattered not
at all how he or I felt and only that she not be perceived in Herry’s eyes as
anyone weakened or possibly influenced by the moaning cries and pleadings of
the child’s mother.With Pearl indeed
driving and as vociferous to Mehitable as a disapproving, incredulous and
outright angry sister – in – law could have been, the car ride to the Eastern
Iowa Airport did nothing to assuage Mehitable’s immoral resolve
nor, of course, calm Zane’s stomach, heartbeats and heartbreak either; and
after the most horrendous and wrenching of goodbyes again that likes of which
we all had only just experienced the previous October, why … Patriarchal
Pappy’s will and Mehitable’s fears of that will of Herry’s prevailed.And essentially, that afternoon, tossed Zane
and his two younger brothers onto the first of three airplanes!

They,
the airplanes, all three of them, pitched and heaved –– as did Zane … “all the
way home, Ma” through three flights and two transfers and … two very
frightened, littler brothers and one very, very sick, weakened, scared, scarred
and selfishly bartered son of mine. Abused, violently violated and
royally fucked Zane was a thing traded between a father and a grandmother … and
about which inane act perped by this child’s supposed loved ones, done by these
two ‘adults,’ his own mama as powerless as ever before … could do absolutely
nothing. Again.

With
that grandmother beginning to secure for herself more and more her most
wanted role of The Hostile – Takeover Mother in The Opera, my Aunt Pearl motored
her and me, completely mute and burning for keeps into my memory this specific
Sunday, 05 April 1992 airport scenario just played out, back to the Burg where
after thanking Ms. Pearl Natures for all of her kindnesses shown to us four, I
immediately packed up everything I most wanted forever and
ever to save –– whichI knew right thenwould be all,
would bethe entire extent of anything that I from my daddyvia
this particular male – identified womancould ever possibly inherit
–– and myself departed, for the very last time,
this house that was no home. It had been no home ever, even with AmTaham
alive and within it –– because of Mehitable; and I determined on the roadtrip
back to the refuge that was my workstation the next morning at the Forestry Department
that I would never darken its doorstep again. Which I have not.

In
addition to Daddy’s dying and to Mehitable’s dwelling now that had never been
for me any true haven at all, I began to finally be able to willfully and to
wholly let go of two others in my life because of the pain which they brought
to me instead of the pleasure from them there in it that I should have been
experiencing. At earlier times in my dealings with her as my sibling, I
felt that perhaps my eldest sister was, with others in her life east of me and
awash in her fanatic, frenetic religiosity, … rather harmless. I thought
that if I could just ignore it, … it –– what crazy – making Ardys’s involvement
in all matters magical and superstitious and mythological and blinding truly
meant and what she really was, an extremist, to the extent that it ruled
her every word and act –– was of no real damage to me or destruction to anyone
else.

Now,
however? Now … I believed entirely differently.

Sister
Ardys’s was the pernicious goading from just beneath skin surfaces where her needling
spur chiseled around and prodded and incited inflammation with subsequent
fulminating infection and infestation all around under there. And all of this
destruction, of course, under the hypocritical pretense of her actions being
those of goodness and light and mercy and grace and a host of other of those
spiritually divine, I’m – such – a – big – person nouns which, in Truth and in
Nature, actually promote generalized dissension and internal dehiscence and
thus, which is of course her niggling intent and desired outcome in the first
place! … thus most especially, … inside a
family!

While Ardys prized her servility ability, another attribute
of some secretariats which this woman most surely did not possess nor had at
all the aspiration to own either, a very good one actually, is the art of
keeping secrets when they soooo need keeping.Which, in my book, is all of them –– that,
indeed, being the essential
ingredient in whether or not some piece of information is defined as a
‘secret’!Inside our family?Noooo, no
secretary she –– if that meant, in any capacity, being a true confidant and
secret – arying.As a matter of fact,
all Mehitable or Sterling needed to do in order to know something was to sic soooo
male – identified Ardys on its trail.And
if it were information that she could obtain, why then it was information which
they too, in short order, would also possess.

I couldn’t have any of that.Not in my life now and, most certainly, not any longer.Not with The Opera and The ‘Courts’ and The
Exalted Herry – Daddee already ruling me with his various filliping, follying folies
as he did. With AmTaham’s apologizing in the Havencourt condominium
basement over our soaking those couple of paintbrushes and his and my long –,
long – due conversation there utterly releasing me from anything lutheran or
christian and his granting his kiddo … me … entire
freedom from religion in general altogether, I had been suddenly made not
only more enlightened in a roundabout sort of way on the immense and daily dangers
of Ardys, of people like her, but also completely liberated from ever, ever
having to react any longer to her as if her extremism was okay and good and a
thing that I myself should strive to embrace when it definitely so was –– not!
Even though Ardys, all of the times I was ever in her presence, either
ostensibly or subtly from behind the scenes’ curtains, forced or foisted her
religiosity onto me … that aggravating jabbing with its egging – on, under –
the – skin kind of invading plague.

My brother’s arrogant demeanor, Sterling’s deportment of
entitlement in and total control over every aspect of his hauntings so similar
to the upscale haughtiness of Herry’s and Mehitable’s, that is, wherever Sterling
roamed, I wanted no more of that either.He and I had been so, so tight as little eight – and ten – year – olds
but that?That we were not … now.

Now, I believed I had no sister
– brother relationship; and while ours had begun to deteriorate my freshman
year in college when I in 1966 and 1967, took to pacific bra – burning and he
took to including all – out militarism into his daily comings and goings that
eventually led him to drop bombs, napalm and agent orange on nameless, faceless
people because of “just following orders,” Sterling hadn’t started out to be
that which he now came before me as.Nor
had AmTaham at all endorsed the type
of individual man Sterling presented himself as –– altogether too recognizable
to me as just another aggressive narcissist, just another Herod Edinsmaier.Just another “because he can” kind of
guy.And
as well, in absolutely no way at all … brotherly.

A true friend to me Mehitable
was never going to become; and in these two others of her gene pool, Ardys and
Sterling, I obviously also could not realize supporters either.Sterling because of his resemblance to all
things Herry and Mehitable, and the treatment which Ardys dished out under her never
– so – holy and quite – galling guise of invoking divinity and love often reminds me of an experience I’d once
had as a newly beginning veterinary student.The three months’ worth of summertime before I commenced the very first academic
year of veterinary class work and with my possessing humans’ medical and nursing
knowledge, skill and its actual registration thereof, why, I had been taken onto
the payroll of the College’s Small Animal Clinic as its only combination
central sterile supply employee and operating – theater nurse.In the midst of a most humid August afternoon,
Emergency Receiving took in on a stretcher an entirely prostrate and moribund Old
English sheepdog … barely breathing, about 80 pounds’ worth.

This dog was not unconscious but so critically dehydrated
and in extreme pain that it just no longer could stand, let alone, walk itself
into our care.The pooch ultimately became
the property of the Small Animal Clinic and a successful ‘experiment’ of that
year’s collection of rotating senior clinical veterinary students since the
canine was not discharged until the following March!Cured.Its owners had not been able to withstand the medical bills which nearly
immediately piled up, not to mention, those that were sustained chronically … although
the Clinic eventually did release the animal back to them anyhow.

On scorching, sticky Iowa days after a cat’s or dog’s
scratch wound merely the size of a pinprick, it takes no time at all for
barnfly eggs laid by those insects attracted to itty – bitty serum droplets wetting
the fur strands by only a miniscule amount … to hatch.And the subsequent maggots therefrom … to
begin their infesting burrowing and tunneling demolition –––– obliterating
under the dermis, epidermis and all of this hound’s foot – long hair the entire
fascial and fibrinous infrastructure of a nearly five – foot – long animal’s
chest, thoracic and abdominal walls … bilaterally.

Once its fur was completely shaved off, anyone would have
had a very difficult time gazing upon this heap were it to have been a corpse
or even a mutilated, rotting, stinking carcass out in an August’s pasture or field
somewhere, but it was made all the more grievous to look upon this critter
knowing that it was –– alive.Hours and
hours and hours and hours the seniors and I labored over this individual dog
for at least the first month that it was with us, and the ensuing ones that it
took for the entire sides of this animal to literally … regrow.The canine had to regenerate a new, complete
covering of skin in from its most outer edges and from its shoulders to its
haunches in toto … bilaterally.And as
critically at the very same time along this long, long way … try to keep
from its becoming infected, Pseudomonasaeruginosa the most egregious and
damning of microbes.The condition
visited one summer in Iowa’s farm country upon this downed creature paralleled
the fifth – degree burns into muscle and bone of persons –– anywhere for any
reason –– splashed with … napalm.

I believed then, and do so today, that the workings and the behaviors
of my sister, Ardys, in her interactions with virtually all others of my
acquaintance and most especially with me and my woundings whether minute or
wide, to be not so different at all from those of jet fighter pilots in Viet
Nam who similarly visited such fuckful conditions upon living things and to
mirror the machinations of those maggots with, intentionally if not also effectively
in at least some of us other recipients of Ardys’s plotting attentions, … matching
consequences.

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About Me

! My thoughts are as free as wind o'er the ocean,
No one can see their form or their motion.
No hunter can find them, no trap ever bind them.
MY LIPS may be STILL, ... ... BUT ... I THINK WHAT I WILL ! ( as, and in the manner, of Alsatian pacifists, World War II )
! The whole body of SCIENCE is PROOF against all gods from all religions !
"The most important attribute for 'a real scientist' is: to actually .understand. some science." -- Dr Brian Cox